Trying to make sense of what plan to buy

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1

I have my site completely finished and ready to launch!

I built it entirely with the free plan. Currently, we have our site and email addresses and domains hosted with Dreamhost.

I am looking at buying the CMS plan but have a few questions:

  • Can I keep my domain at Dreamhost and simply point Dreamhost to Webflow so that I don’t lose all the email addresses setup already?
  • Can I still upload and host files via FTP? Will that change to a Webflow FTP for storage?
  • Are there limits to file storage? WebFlow doesn’t list any but I have like 25 PDF files that the website needs to link to directly and it’s unclear how Webflow handles this. Is it easy to upload via FTP app?
2

Yes.

Not really. You can upload PDFs into Webflow assets and share those URLs, but-

  • There is a file size limit for each PDF
  • You will be charged bandwidth for the downloads
  • There is no way to update them
  • There is no way to delete them, except through support
  • The URLs change, so that lose the visual reference to your site

If any of those are a problem for your use case, most people would setup their own hosting for the files, and point a subdomain, like files.mysite.com, to that hosting just for the PDFs.

Anything more complex than that requires a reverse proxy build, but effectively removes any limits you might encounter.

Per file, the size limit is 4MB for images, I’m not sure what PDFs are, I recommend you test on your staging site first.

Otherwise I’m not aware of file storage limits, but you pay for the bandwidth if you exceed your plan limits.

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3

Wait, so how does that work?

As I understand it (and I’ve only done this once before) once I set the DNS and other settings for www.mysite.com at Dreamhost then I will lose the ability to add files via FTP.

You’re saying that I can create a subdomain for subdomain.mysite.com and use my Dreamhost hosting to host the files?

4

Sure you could do that. I don’t know Dreamhost, but if you can store files there, you’d setup e.g. files. to serve them and e.g. ftp. as your FTP endpoint.

5

Interesting. I thought once the domain was linked to Webflow you lost FTP access to it and subdomains.

Is there any documentation on this somewhere?

6

Webflow will utilize your site.com and www.site.com DNS wiring, and Webflow doesn’t offer FTP access to its hosting servers.

Everything else is free for you to route anywhere you like, it’s your domain and you control your DNS>

I’d assume Dreamhost has docs on both setting up subdomains and on hosting and FTP configuration for their service. Do anything you like, just leave your Webflow entries alone and you’re golden.